


the canvas of skin

by Celestos (Seruspica)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Can be seen as platonic, Gen, Shipping implied only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-23 01:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7461738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seruspica/pseuds/Celestos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU (canon divergence) drabble, done by request. Loss leaves you empty, but somehow aware of what makes you more; each and every small mark, and the warmth of another pair of hands just as beaten as yours. Implied Anikishipping, but may be seen as platonic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the canvas of skin

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to an anonymous request on a shipping blog I help to run, theanikistmanifesto on Tumblr. Come send us a prompt sometime, and we'll try and do it.
> 
> The prompt was Anikiship angst, specifically 'what if Ryou had died in Season 4', so I did that.
> 
> Warning - this fic does contain some mentions of self-harm, though no actual execution. I hope this was to the original anon's liking.

**** Hands meet hands. Fingers brush against fingers. Shou doesn’t look up. 

There’s nothing to say. It hurts to swallow. He hasn’t eaten for hours. The sky is blue, and he hates it.

His hands are still quivering. He wishes he could let his tears spill, but there’s nothing there to force him to cry; nothing but emptiness. Something had lived once; like a flame, its light had been they tried to come close to it.

His hands had been clasped, sweat forming, for hours. He could have prayed; he thought of praying once more, as he had in the past.

He had not done it. After the Dark World, his mind had burned God to a cinder.

When the news had come of his brother’s death, his hands had ached for something as firm as a knife, or a small blade.There was no reason to live; not when he had been left. He had been a disappointment from the start; the last thing anyone needed was shame.

He had wanted death for himself.

He had wanted a quick end, without a mark on himself.

But still, he had held on, and he was alive. His hands were in front of him, empty save for Judai’s hold, keeping him warm and keeping him more than whole in some way he couldn’t explain.

He had had warmth only hours ago, even if it had been brief. For an instant, he had held his brother’s hand, and in that instant he’d felt as if he was holding his heart in his hands. The trembling, the faintness, as if the world collapsing in on itself just for a moment. 

There had been rushing and quiet and nothing but white noise in his ears. His hands had been shaking for hours. There had been nothing to keep calm for; nothing to restrain him, and every reason to wallow in his own pain.

Judai’s hands aren’t the same as Ryou’s.

They aren’t the same hands as the ones he has known for years, either. His fingers are nimble, a little longer - or thinner, he thinks - and dotted with new marks, the odd cut or scrape or an unpleasant-looking scar on his knuckle he never remembered him having before they had entered the Dark World. His hands are like a book, readable but neither open nor shut. He knows he can guess them, but he does not know the real answers.

Judai is here, like he was for a long time, and how one day he dreams he will be again. The world has changed. His hands aren’t the same as they used to be, but neither are his own, he thinks. Even when they’re nestled like this, between Judai’s, and he cannot see his palms clearly, he knows they have their newly-gained scrapes.

Even he has all kinds of things, all kinds of scars. Some otherwordly nettles left red marks on one leg, having stung through his clothes. There’s a small burn on his thumb from a failed attempt at lighting a fire. He wonders when the marks some thorns left behind on his side will finally fade.

Maybe they won’t, he wonders, and maybe they will. Life’s toll is strange, unpredictable even. His brother had been unreachable, and Judai had always been here, there and everywhere - two unreachable targets, one stable and the other anything but, but both high and both difficult to believe that he’d ever reach.

His hands weren’t the same. Judai’s weren’t either. Ryou’s were no longer there.

One pair had been warm when he’d held them, and the other still was.


End file.
